Or, as you mentioned, if you already have one that you'd like to use, you can ask an attorney to do "doc review" for you. 

It is possible that the 'no comment' response is because of no experience for the property management company, but at the same time is it a red flag you want to rule out before taking these tenants on.Lots of good suggestions mentioned here- checking out their car, their current apartment, etc.Good luck!

Was mentioning, very few people have enough money to self-insure liability.

Not to mention some of these countries have unemployment levels as high as 30%, so you could rent to someone who has never had a job, may not speak English and can't drive a car. 

I am personally treading water in this area as I have a property I want to use for a non-permitted use.You also mentioned using your retirement funds - if these are in a qualified plan this opens up a whole new can of worms. 

So really, this is a no money down owner financing deal, but the liens have to be paid before we can move forward.I'm looking for $175,000 which will be secured with the 3 multi-families I mentioned above.

Special case, I know, but I mention for the purposes of illustration.  

It seems to be a hybrid form of REI.You earlier mentioned MFR, so I'm curious if that has been more of your focus or do you maintain a mix of SFR and MFR? 

Also as mentioned above, your effective return on a paid-off property is not the best use of that dead equity.Ultimately I think this comes down to your time horizon.

Yes, banks will do longer amortization on loans, but as it was mentioned above, financing small deals like that can be incredibly challenging.